More Pascal

French - Philosopher June 19, 1623 - August 19, 1662

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
Blaise Pascal

Imagination decides everything.
Blaise Pascal

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
Blaise Pascal

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
Blaise Pascal

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
Blaise Pascal

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
Blaise Pascal

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.
Blaise Pascal

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.
Blaise Pascal

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
Blaise Pascal

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
Blaise Pascal

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Blaise Pascal

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
Blaise Pascal

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
Blaise Pascal

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Blaise Pascal

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Blaise Pascal

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
Blaise Pascal

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
Blaise Pascal

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
Blaise Pascal

We never love a person, but only qualities.
Blaise Pascal

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
Blaise Pascal

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
Blaise Pascal

The only shame is to have none.
Blaise Pascal

Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
Blaise Pascal

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.
Blaise Pascal

Vanity is but the surface.
Blaise Pascal

It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.
Blaise Pascal

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
Blaise Pascal

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
Blaise Pascal

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.
Blaise Pascal

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.
Blaise Pascal

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.
Blaise Pascal

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
Blaise Pascal

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.
Blaise Pascal

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
Blaise Pascal

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
Blaise Pascal

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
Blaise Pascal

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Blaise Pascal

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
Blaise Pascal

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
Blaise Pascal

If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.
Blaise Pascal

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
Blaise Pascal

The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
Blaise Pascal

The self is hateful.
Blaise Pascal

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.
Blaise Pascal

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
Blaise Pascal

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
Blaise Pascal

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
Blaise Pascal

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
Blaise Pascal

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
Blaise Pascal

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
Blaise Pascal

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.
Blaise Pascal

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
Blaise Pascal

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
Blaise Pascal

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
Blaise Pascal

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
Blaise Pascal

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
Blaise Pascal

Men blaspheme what they do not know.
Blaise Pascal

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
Blaise Pascal